


The Parable of the Geneticist

by keerawa



Category: The Outer Worlds (Video Game)
Genre: Crueltide, Future Fic, Gen, Genetic Engineering, Misses Clause Challenge, Order of Scientific Inquiry, Post-Canon, Religion, Science, Unreliable Narrator, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:15:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21842020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keerawa/pseuds/keerawa
Summary: The Question was simple: how could she improve humanity?
Comments: 7
Kudos: 11
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	The Parable of the Geneticist

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ChokolatteJedi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChokolatteJedi/gifts).



> Warnings for dark themes, including canonical levels of cannibalism and human experimentation.
> 
> Thanks to Nedrika for the genetics consult - anything resembling real science here is entirely due to her good influence and advice. Thanks to eliajah_was_a_prophet for the beta.

Our parable begins with the revival of a scientist we know only as Alex Hawthorne. Her detractors claim that she was a con-artist all along, and Captain Hawthorne’s name and his ship, _The Unreliable_ , were only the first of her thefts. Apologists say she took Hawthorne’s name to honor a man who had died that she might live. The children of Halcyon learn the deeper truth in catechism.

_A name and a ship were the first tributes she took upon awakening in a new world, ripe for conquest._

Captain Hawthorne blew into Halcyon like a great stellar storm, making friends, destroying anyone who stood in her way, and upending the social and spiritual order of the system. Within a month she had spear-headed a revolution against the corporations and revived the colonists of The Hope, nearly doubling the population of a colony already on the brink of starvation.

The Hunger Plague descended; more and more colonists fell into weakness and death. Their bodies were churned into the soil in a desperate attempt to stave off malnutrition and death for a few more months. We of Halcyon will never forget those times, and the lessons they taught us. Now, as then, the strongest survive.

_The weak fall and we feast upon their flesh, as it is ordained._

Dr. Hawthorne embarked on a desperately ambitious research project with Dr. Eva Chartrand, Dr. Phineas Welles, and the greatest scientific minds from The Hope. Dr. Hawthorne would not allow Dr. Chartrand or any of the scientists involved in the Work to sacrifice themselves to it. There were plenty of volunteers, once Dr. Hawthorne promised the best food to any designated beneficiary of these heroes.

_We honor them, those wise and brave enough to see their place in the Great Plan, those martyred to the cause of Science!_

The scientists’ attempts to modify the human genome to allow humans to survive on Halcyon’s flora and fauna failed, and failed, and failed again. Until Captain Ellie Fenhill, carrying out a marauder bounty on Monarch, noticed that none of the marauders showed any sign of the Hunger Plague. Medically trained and a former member of _The Unreliable_ , Captain Fenhill recognized the importance of this discovery and immediately captured a dozen live specimens to deliver to Dr. Hawthorne’s laboratory. The scientists confirmed her findings. The Adrena-Time addiction that had caused the marauders’ intellectual regression and viciousness somehow also enabled them to survive and thrive in Halcyon.

_Praise to Dr. Hawthorne, who asked the Question. Praise to the Grand Architect, who provided the Answer only once we were ready to accept it._

Genetic testing confirmed that the marauders’ DNA contained markers similar to certain Halcyon fauna. Dr. Chartrand had focused all of her research efforts on the native fauna that were easy to control and feed. But the marauders somehow had acquired mutations of genes otherwise found only in the deadliest of Halcyon’s predators – the mantisaur.

Nyoka Ramnarim-Wentworth III, the greatest hunter of the age, captured mantisaurs and the dread mantiqueens from all over Monarch to provide the genetic material needed for Hawthorne’s research. The entire science-capable population of Halcyon embarked on a crash project, rapidly mapping the mantisaurs’ entire genome and replicating sections that might be involved in the digestive system. Frantic fluorescent assays, viral vectors, and a billion force-grown fruit flies, all knockout mutants were sacrificed to the cause as the colonists of Halcyon starved with full bellies. Dr. Welles discovered that the only way for a living subject to survive the necessary changes was in a carefully modulated stasis. Through Divine Providence, hundreds of thousands of stasis pods were available on _The Hope_. When Dr. Hawthorne decided the new gene therapy was ready for its first human subject, Nyoka volunteered.

_All hail Nyoka, first of the Queens of Halcyon!_

Nyoka emerged from her stasis pod smiling, strong, and pleased with herself. She underwent a week of intense physiological, cognitive, and psychological tests that proved she was in the best condition of her life. The gene therapy had even cured her alcohol addiction. Dr. Hawthorne and Chairman Rockwell broadcast a message across the system announcing that the gene therapy was a complete success. Together, they declared humanity the Victor in its War on Hunger. 

Hawthorne’s detractors point to this broadcast as an act of astonishing arrogance and gross scientific misconduct; they call it the beginning of the end of humanity. Hawthorne’s apologists point out that the colony was teetering on the edge of self-destruction as the rates of suicide and homicide increased exponentially every month. They say that Dr. Hawthorne had no way of knowing that certain aspects of Nyoka’s original personality: her violence, pride, dominance, possessiveness, and love of risk-taking, had masked the psychological side-effects of the gene therapy. They say that Hawthorne acted in good faith, under the most desperate of circumstances; she knew not what she had wrought. The children of Halcyon learn the deeper truth in catechism.

_Hawthorne awakened to a world destroying itself through greed, ignorance, and fear, where money was more important than strength, honor, or intelligence. She saw what humanity had become. She saw a way to make us better. And she took it._

When others on the staff protested that they needed more limited and longer-term testing, before offering the gene therapy to the population of Halcyon, Dr. Hawthorne insisted that she, herself, would be the next test subject.

Hawthorne emerged from her stasis pod graceful and bright-eyed. She froze, scenting the air, and stared at Nyoka. The first words that Nyoka said to her have been immortalized in holo-reels and docu-dramas across a dozen systems.

“C’mon. Let’s go hunting.”

Hawthorne nodded. She allowed two hours for an initial battery of tests, enough to reassure her staff she was neither psychotic nor about to drop dead of a heart attack, and then took off on _The Unreliable_ with Nyoka. They returned twenty-four hours later bearing the corpse of a mantiqueen and a set of terrible but rapidly healing cuts, bruises, and burns. The medical staff swarmed over them, taking readings. Dr. Chartrand asked how they had been injured.

“Where’s the fun in hunting things that can’t hunt you back?” Nyoka answered with a grin.

“I’ll put your top people, and mine, through the gene therapy first,” Hawthorne told her.

“We’ve got a lot to do,” Nyoka answered, shaking off the scientists and heading for her own ship.

The two women would remain friends and allies throughout their lives, but that was the last time they would ever breathe each other’s air.

_All hail the Queens of Halcyon, wild, vicious, and brilliant, Mothers to us all._

Once Hawthorne’s scientists and Nyoka’s hunters had undergone the therapy and accepted their place in the Plan, the gene therapy was rapidly put into mass production. Colonists who had been born on Halcyon had never known the pleasure of a full belly. Who among them would turn down this triumph of technology over nature? What parent would deny their child this blessing? 

Ellie Fenhill, Junlei Tennyson, Zora Blackwood, Adelaide McDevitt, Lilya Hagen, Celia Robbins, Cassandra O'Malley, and even Sophia Akande eventually accepted the therapy and took their rightful place in the colony, carving out territories of their own. The Board and its corporations had been replaced by packs of colonists unwaveringly loyal to their Queens. It was more efficient and far more righteous; a Queen’s instinctive need to provide for her pack could not be denied.

Within a year, every human in Halcyon who wanted the therapy had received it. Rockwell was dead, stabbed through the heart for a flagrant lack of respect towards his Queen. The social order had been destroyed utterly and rebuilt in accordance with the Grand Plan. 

When other human colonies contacted us, they found Halcyon, not weak and begging for help, but strong and eager for conquest. Queens can cooperate when there is new territory to be won. And the stars are full of prizes ripe for the taking.

What does the future hold?

Our enemies claim we are in a death spiral; that once there are no more ‘pure’ humans to conquer we will turn our aggressions inwards and destroy ourselves. Our subjects say that we are kinder masters than the corporations; they pray that someday their children’s children will be found worthy of the gene therapy. We of Halcyon learn the deeper truth in catechism.

_Someday the ones that destroyed Earth will come to the Outer Worlds seeking to wipe out the last remnants of humanity. They will expect easy prey. Instead they will find Humanity Reborn, apex predators all._

_We are ready. We are eager. And we hunger for their flesh._

The End


End file.
